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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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There is a citation in my post - RUSI's paper right there. It's open source, and they list where they got the information from where possible. You can disagree (especially where it's author interviews or him with a clearance seeing multiple copies of captured Russian equipment or the same documented instructions), but here you go if you cannot open the link for some reason, it's footnote 70: In Kherson, see BBC News, ‘Inside Russian “Torture Chambers” in Ukrainian City of Kherson – BBC News’, Youtube, https://youtube.com/watchv=AE_45TrZqU8, accessed 18 March 2023; in Kharkiv oblast, see John Ray, ‘Ukrainian Retraces Steps to Torture Chamber where he was “Electrocuted and Beaten for Six Days”’, 22 September 2022, < https://www.itv.com/news/2022-09-22/ukrainian-retraces-steps-to-torture-chamber-where-he-was-beaten-for-six-days>, accessed 18 March 2023; in Kyiv oblast, see Erika Kinetz et al., ‘“Method to the Violence”: Dogged Investigation and Groundbreaking Visuals Document Bucha “Cleansing”’, AP News, 11 November 2022; author observations around Bucha, June 2022 and Kharkiv oblast, October 2022.

In particular, I would also highlight this from right at the start of the war: "The population was divided into five core categories:

  1. Those deemed leaders of Ukrainian nationalism who were specified for physical liquidation on a high-priority target list, or for capture to enable show trials.
  2. Those suspected of intending to support acts of resistance who needed to be recruited or suppressed including anyone associated with Ukrainian law enforcement, local government, the military or related to officials that were not actively collaborating.
  3. Those who were deemed apathetic.
  4. Those actively collaborating with Russian forces.
  5. Individuals who were necessary for running critical national infrastructure and had to be controlled.69"

Source 69 above, is: The methodology was set out in an instruction issued by the Russian Presidential Administration and obtained by the Intelligence Community of Ukraine. Author interview with Q (Senior Field Counterintelligence Officer in Ukrainian Agency 4), Ukraine, February 2022; author interview with G; author interviews with R (former head of Ukrainian agency 2), Ukraine, February 2022; author interviews with J (deputy head of Ukrainian agency 5), Ukraine, August and October 2022; see also Erika Kinetz, ‘“We Will Find You:” Russians Hunt Down Ukrainians on Lists’, AP News, 21 December 2022.

I am confused how you missed it? I dug through your AI and the links weren't easy to find - or were not there - but this one was directly next to the text.

*edit: Oh, for others of a paranoid persuasion, that RUSI link is also a good overview of what an occupying force of high levels of brutality but using dumb troops of not high numbers and limited time might do to you and your family if you were ever occupied - and its very readable.